Although his wife stood by him and insisted that attorney Edgar Steele was the victim of a government plot to silence him, the Idaho lawyer today was convicted by a federal jury concerning his alleged contract with a family handyman to kill his spouse with a pipe bomb.

Steele, who is known for defending white supremacists, was found guilty on all four counts, some of which related to his alleged plan to kill his mother-in-law, too, the Spokesman-Review reported. The government said he wanted to collect an insurance payoff and pursue a relationship with a 25-year-old woman from the Ukraine.

An Associated Press article provides more details about the charges against Steele and says he could get up to 30 years when he is sentenced for possessing a destructive device.

“He’s innocent,” Cyndi Steele said after the verdict was announced in federal court in Boise. “He did not do this, and we have the proof, which was denied in the courtroom.”

She says secret recordings of her husband plotting her murder were fabricated. She said some 14,000 messages Steele sent to the 25-year-old and other women he met online through a dating service were part of his research on Russian mail-order brides, another Spokesman-Review article notes.